Ireland hits record €491m health tech VC investment

Irish life sciences and health tech companies set a decade-high record in 2024 raising €491.3 million (£432m) across 89 venture capital deals, according to a report powered by PitchBook data. 

The report, ‘Ireland’s life sciences & health tech landscape‘, published on 2 December 2025, says that Ireland saw late-stage and venture-growth deals surge to 46% of total volume in 2024– more than double the proportion recorded in 2014.

Cepta Duffy, head of life sciences and health tech at Enterprise Ireland, said: “At a time when global life sciences and health tech funding has contracted dramatically, Ireland has produced a stellar performance and continues to attract large-scale growth capital from international investors.

“This report confirms our ecosystem is not just resilient – it is thriving and ready for its next phase of global leadership.”

Enterprise Ireland, the government organisation responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises, was the world’s most active life sciences and health tech investor in 2024, participating in 60 deals.

Ireland’s €500m (£440m) Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund, administered by Enterprise Ireland, has been established to fund the next wave of health innovation from Ireland.

To date €454m (£400m) has been awarded, with €298m (£262m) of this distributed to 68 projects in the health and wellbeing sector. 

Ireland’s maturing ecosystem continued into 2025 with a €115 million (£101m) late-stage deal for Dublin-based medical device firm FIRE1, one of the largest health tech rounds in Europe this year.

The startup’s heart failure management system Norm, aims to reduce the need for hospital visits for people living with heart failure through a sensor which is implanted in the inferior vena cava (IVC) to monitor fluid levels.

The patient wears a belt for a few minutes each day which receives sensor measurements and sends them to the cloud to be analysed. Results are then shared with the medical team and can be checked on a smartphone app.

Conor Hanley, chief executive and president of FIRE1, said: “From the beginning, our team has been driven by two core goals: creating a better way to manage heart failure by monitoring fluid volume more directly, and empowering patients with actionable data to improve their lives.”

Ireland is the second-largest exporter of MedTech products in Europe after Switzerland, with exports valued at €16 billion annually, representing 14% of the country’s total exports.

It hosts more than 700 life sciences and health tech firms, including over 400 home-grown companies alongside nine of the world’s top 10 MedTech multinationals.

Meanwhile, since September 2025 patients at 31 hospitals in Ireland have been able to view their appointments and access personal health and social care information in the Health Service Executive (HSE) Health App.

HSE is working with the remaining public hospitals to enable patients to see their appointments in the app.